In which I look at the story of a nerf gun used as a cognitive behavioral therapy tool, and an interesting issue mentioned in the story. (I have a previous post about this with some of the story as text.) You can also view this on YouTube:
Category: Missing the Mark Podcast
No One Believes in the Burden of Proof
No one actually believes in the burden of proof, not even the people who constantly talk about it. You can also watch this video on YouTube:
Finding Your Purpose In Life
Thoughts on how to find one’s purpose in life. You can also watch on YouTube:
Talking About Writing With Cheah Kai Wai
I talked with the Herald of the Pulp Revolution, Cheah Kai Wai (note that Kai Wai is his personal name), about writing, stories, and related subjects.
You can also watch it on YouTube, if you prefer:
Solzhenitsyn: Because Men Forgot God
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.
But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’” –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
You can also watch the video on YouTube:
Explaining Hell to a Nine Year Old
I recently explained hell to my nine year old son in a way that presented the adult version rather than the kid’s cartoon-book version and he understood it, so I’m relating that explanation here because it might be of interest.
You can also watch this on YouTube:
Why Lent Isn’t Stupid
I discuss fasting and the value of such practices in Lent. You can watch it on YouTube, if you prefer:
Beware of People Who Approve of Your Vices
I talk about why one should be very wary of people who approve of your vices—they want something from you. You can also watch this on YouTube:
Some Questions About Meaning
A friend, acting out of morbid curiosity, watched a video by Bionic Dance that responded to my video, Life Doesn’t Have the Meaning You Give it, and alerted to me to it having some questions in it which might be interesting to answer. So I watched the video myself, wrote down the interesting questions, and answered them in this video.
I didn’t make a response video to her because—as I said in my video on why I’m not going to respond to her again—she contradicts herself so often that no response is needed; one only needs watch the entirety of her video (and remember what she said in the earlier parts) to see her refute herself. However, I will answer questions which I think can be generally useful regardless of where they came from, and these happened to be fairly well phrased for general use.
You can also watch it on YouTube:
Life Doesn’t Have the Meaning You Give It
In this episode I discuss the idea that “life has the meaning you give it” and how it’s not true. If you prefer, you can watch the video on YouTube:
Good Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
I talk about why the book How To Win Friends And Influence People is a good book. I highly recommend it. You can also watch this on YouTube if you prefer:
How To Make Friends
Or you can watch the video on YouTube, if you prefer:
How To Recognize Honest Atheists
On the internet one will run across many atheists who are speaking in bad faith. I give a technique for how to tell whether any given atheist is speaking in good faith or in bad faith. Or you can view it on YouTube, if you like:
Historical Fiction w/ Professor Rachel Fulton Brown
Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and I discussed historical fiction and related subjects in this interview which was, by my standards, surprisingly on-topic. (It would generally be considered fairly wide-ranging, I think.) You can also watch it on YouTube if you prefer:
An Alternative to the Burden of Proof
One commonly hears from online atheists that if you don’t accept the principle that the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim, then you have to believe everything that you hear. So I helpfully present an alternative—thinking rationally. You can of course also watch it on YouTube:
A Few Gumballs Short of a Picnic
I got an email from a young man named Ken who asked me about an analogy Matt Dillahunty presents about whether the number of gumballs in a jar is odd or even. I originally did an unscripted answer but a lot of people missed the point so I did a scripted video which should be a lot clearer. You can of course watch it in YouTube:
